Kids today communicate via computer keyboard and cell phone texts, so handwriting isn’t as important as it used to be, right?  Wrong!

Kids need to learn to write by hand; it is key to building language skills — to reading and communication. According to Kids Health, “experts think that developing writing skills reinforces reading skills and vice versa.” A child learns to read by understanding letters and sounds, and learning to write those letters is an important part of this. Handwriting is also important because kids use it daily in their formal schooling — from kindergarten on.

Writing may seem like an automatic task, but it’s actually one of the most complex things we do. It takes years to learn to write, with each new skill building on the last. Think about the steps involved in writing your name:

• you pick up a pencil
• you hold it steady between your fingers
• you recall what it is you want to write
• you think about what letters appear in your name, and in what order
• you move your hand and wrist in a way that helps you properly shape the letters
• you follow what you wrote with your eyes
• you apply appropriate pressure to the paper

Kids who are regularly exposed to handwriting understand at a very young age that written words have meaning. Before long, kids start trying to create their own words by scribbling. With practice, the scribbling turns to patterns, then to repetitive patterns. At around the age of 3, kids may start to print recognizable letters. By kindergarten and first grade, children learn to put letters together into words. Many will use only capital letters and omit spaces between words, and they may make spellings for words (for example, LUV for love).

With training from parents and teachers, kids learn the conventions of print — writing from left to right and top to bottom, the difference between upper- and lowercase letters, spaces between words, and correct spelling. Teaching these things now will help them become second-nature. As your child grows, motor skills continue to improve, and his handwriting becomes smaller and neater. Between the second and fourth grades, kids learn cursive writing.

Interestingly, kids who are good at handwriting have developed motor control skills that will help them better use a keyboard. Good handwriting also develops communication skills that will help kids be better writers because they know how to transfer thoughts into words.

So, as tempting as it may be to give your kids a technology edge, it’s equally important that they gain a solid understanding of effective, old-fashioned handwriting. By the time your child is 1 year old, he can hold a fat crayon or marker and scribble on a big piece of paper. As he grows, supply him with a variety of supplies like colored pencils, paints and brushes, special paper, and more. Let him write and draw outside with sidewalk chalk. Give him a paintbrush and water and let him paint words on the driveway. Give him a stick and let him write his name in the sandbox. All of this practice will contribute to the muscles, skills, and coordination needed to form letters.

As your child begins writing regularly in school, continue to encourage him to practice at home, too. He can write letters to grandparents or jot down his thoughts in a journal. When he’s older, suggest he handwrite his school papers before typing them up on the computer.  Remember, learning to write well takes years. Be patient with your child and give them as many practice opportunities as possible.

Don’t let keyboarding take precedence of the importance of handwriting. Learning to write and read are keys to success at school and in life.

Read more: Preparing your young child for school

If your three-year-old refuses to share his toys with friends or classmates, don’t lose heart. By the time he’s 7 or 8, he’ll learn to share.

The University of Zurich recently conducted research to determine at what age children learn to share and understand equality. 229 children were offered candy within various scenarios.

In the sharing treatment, the children could take one piece of candy for themselves and one for another child, or they could take two pieces for themselves and nothing for the other child. Only 8.7% of children age 3 or 4 chose to give another child a piece of candy. By age 7, however, 45% of children shared one of the candies.

In the envy treatment, children could choose one candy for themselves and one for their friend or one for themslves and two for the friend. In this scenario, the older children were more likely to decide everyone should get just one candy.

In general, older children chose more consistently fair outcomes in all the scenarios, according to researchers. They were more likely to want everything to be equal. Even so, the study reports, as children became more egalitarian, they also became more parochial. At all ages, children were more likely to share with children they knew versus those they did not know, and this tendency increased with age.

Additionally, children who didn’t have siblings were more likely to share than children with siblings; and the least likely to share were the youngest children in the birth order.

How do you encourage your kids to share?

Read more:

• Bringing home Baby: Preparing young children
• So, you want to have another baby? Parenting larger families

Today’s New York Times Magazine has a fascinating article about the science of play. While it is quite involved and admittedly, a tad over my head, here’s one paragraph that jumped out at me:

Parents bobble between a nostalgia-infused yearning for their children to play and fear that time spent playing is time lost to more practical pursuits. Alarming headlines about U.S. students falling behind other countries in science and math, combined with the ever-more-intense competition to get kids into college, make parents rush to sign up their children for piano lessons and test-prep courses instead of just leaving them to improvise on their own; playtime versus résumé building.

Maybe it’s a mom-guilt thing, but there is constant pressure to get your little one on the “baby dean’s list.” Is J.J. getting enough free play time? Should I sign him up for enrichment programs? What’s the right balance? How will he get into a top college if I can’t get him into a top pre-school? And, how is his current activity load going to affect his social and academic future?

Then the rational part of me takes a step back and realizes there’s no need to stress. He’s got the next 18 or so years to go to school everyday and do homework, so if he lingers around the TV or his non-educational toys a little longer on a given day, what’s the big deal? And, besides, no matter what the science says (if you can decipher that article and summarize it for me, you get extra credit!), lots of learning takes place through play.

Just think about some of the interaction you share together during the infant months, for instance:

Game: Peekaboo
What baby is learning: Object Permanence (the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight)

Game: Pat-a-Cake
What baby is learning: Rhythm and coordination

Game: Opening and closing the light
What baby is learning: Cause and effect

See? Learning can be fun. So  put the flashcards down for a few minutes, and go act silly with your kids. Or better yet, let them play on their own, how they want. Your job is to sit back and observe — you just may learn something.

Worried that your preschooler isn’t learning at the same pace as her peers? Perhaps a vision test is in order. Check out the results of this “eye-opening” study:

Preschoolers with poor vision have lower scores in developmental testing indicative of success in school performance, but those scores improve significantly within six weeks when the children are given prescription glasses, according to a new study by the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. The study appears in the February issue of Archives of Ophthalmology.

“Amazingly, this is the first controlled study of preschool children to show the cognitive disadvantage preschool children have when they are far sighted and/or have astigmatism, as well as to show the benefit of early intervention with glasses,” said study co-author Barbara Brody, M.P.H., director of the Center for Community Ophthalmology at the UC San Diego Shiley Eye Center, and clinical professor in the Departments of Ophthalmology and Community and Preventive Medicine.

Here are some warning signs that your preschooler may have a vision problem, courtesy of AllAboutVision.com:

• Consistently sitting too close to the TV or holding a book too close
• Squinting
• Tilting the head to see better
• Frequent eye rubbing when your child is not sleepy
• Sensitivity to light
• Excessive tearing
• Closing one eye to read, watch TV or see better
• Avoiding activities which require near vision, such as coloring or reading, or distance vision, such as playing ball or tag
• Complaining of headaches or tired eyes

Whether you notice these signs or not (what kid doesn’t sit too close to the TV?), it might be a good idea to get your little one’s precious peepers checked out to address any possible vision problems ASAP anyway. Guess I should make an appointment, huh?

How old was your child when he or she first had an eye check-up?

Good news, TV-watching families: Finally, there’s a child development movement that doesn’t blame TV for every misstep your child takes. In fact, if you pick your programming right, they say, kids just may learn a little something from the tube. So say the experts cited in Newsweek’s “Kids: To TV or Not to TV” Tip Sheet.

“There’s evidence now that certain kinds of programming can help kids with language development and can be beneficial in moderation,” explains Deborah Linebarger in the article. She’s an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication who studies the effects of media on young children (plus she’s a mom who lets her kids watch!).

Here are the facts: “90 percent of 2-year-olds regularly watch TV, DVDs or videos, and one third of 3- to 6-year-olds have a TV in their bedroom.” I know that’s the case in my household, and that of pretty much every family I know. As for what to watch, well, that makes all the difference.  No MTV or professional wrestling, that’s for sure. I tend to leave my dial on Noggin or Nick Jr. for my almost-four year old, but the children’s shows on Playhouse Disney and PBS are great, too.

Why? Lots of fun with learning mixed in. Counting, colors, letters, shapes, Spanish, safety tips — these lessons and more are all incorporated into simple storylines with brightly colored animation and music. And just watch how your child’s vocabulary will grow!

Recommended viewing, age by age:

Up to age 2. “Blue’s Clues” or “Arthur”
My pick: Baby Einstein DVDs

Ages 2 to 5. “Dora the Explorer” and “Clifford”
My pick: “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” and “Jack’s Big Music Show”

Ages 6 to 10. Prescreen as much as possible to make sure the show you’re watching is teaching your child the same values you are.
My pick:  Disney films

Which TV shows do you prefer your children watch and why? 

Ever stare in wonder as your little one almost innately knows how to grab the remote control and cue up his or her favorite show on the DVR? Or her fascination will cell phones or your laptop while you’re trying to check your e-mail? The fact is today’s toddlers and preschoolers are digitally driven.

While many child development experts are down on tyke tech overload since they fear it will replace the desire to read books or prevent kids from imaginative play, if incorporated in a smart way, technology can be a useful learning tool.

“Toddlers see computers all around them. They want to master their environment and identify with mom, dad, and older siblings,” says Marjorie H. Charlop-Christy, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at Claremont McKenna College and director of The Claremont Autism Center. And, allowing them to explore technology gives them new opportunities to learn, she adds.

Here are some smart ways to have tech-inspired fun and learning:

• Click into creativity. Create art projects from photos taken by your budding photographer on his kiddie digital camera.
• Choose technology teachers over time wasters. Look for age-appropriate technology that meshes with concepts the child is currently learning, such as a computer matching game, Websites with interactive animated stories, or toy keyboards and video game consoles that teach colors, shapes, letters, and numbers.
• Find time for physical activity and creative play. “Nothing replaces going out in the fresh air and swinging in the park, or having a tea party with a friend and dolls,” cautions Charlop-Christy.

Like anything else, when not used in moderation, even good things bring negative results. Not to mention those wasted minutes trying to figure out how to retrieve the blog post your little guy clicked off your screen.

What type of tech activities do you enjoy doing with your child?